Facebook Director of Mobile Jed Stremel Resigns

Jed Stremel, Facebook’s Director of Mobile who has been with the company for four years, has resigned, according to a post on his Facebook profile. Stremel was charged with leading the company’s mobile strategy, and was previously involved in Business Development at Facebook.

Below is Stremel’s bio, taken from last year’s MobileBeat conference page.

Jed Stremel oversees Facebook’s mobile strategy transforming how individuals find and express information relevant to their life. Prior to Facebook, Jed played key partnership, business operations, and strategic roles at high-growth businesses. He spearheaded mobile initiatives for Yahoo! building the company’s efforts to empower seamless communications across SMS, WAP, Java, BREW, and other mobile technologies. At Tellme Jed managed distribution, promotion, and licensing relationships with leading online and telecommunications partners. Jed holds a law degree from Santa Clara University and a bachelor’s degree in economics and public policy from Duke University.

Other recent departures from Facebook include Josh Elman, who was Facebook’s Platform Program Manager and was deeply involved in the launch of Facebook Connect. Elman joined Twitter earlier this week as a product manager.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment.

Bye Bye Bluetooth

Come 2010 and no longer would you be using Bluetooth for short range file transfer. What’s coming from the WiFi Alliance is a really ground breaking stuff. WiFi Direct a new set of standards will turn your ‘WiFi gadget’ into an access point.

What does this mean?

In simple words you would no longer need a WiFi Router for a peer to peer file transfer. This means days of Bluetooth are numbered. This means very high speed peer to peer transfer (30 times faster than Bluetooth) with in a radius of 300 feet.

How will it work?

Any WiFi Device will be able to upgrade to WiFi Direct by a software upgrade and all new devices will be certified as ‘Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Wi-Fi Direct’.

WiFi Alliance consortium includes Intel, Cisco and Apple and almost all big players.

In a press release Wi-Fi Alliance executive director Edgar Figueroa said

“Wi-Fi Direct represents a leap forward for our industry. Wi-Fi users worldwide will benefit from a single-technology solution to transfer content and share applications quickly and easily among devices, even when a Wi-Fi access point isn’t available”

Bye Bye Bluetooth!

Lenovo rolls out PCs with Windows 7 OS

Bangalore: Coinciding with the global launch of Windows 7 by software giant Microsoft, leading computer maker Lenovo Thursday rolled out in the Indian market a new range of Think and Idea-branded PCs running on the new operating system.

"We are also introducing two new ThinkPad laptops with Windows 7 OS for the small-to-medium businesses (SMB) work. We are certifying Windows 7 PCs under the enhanced experience programme," Lenovo said in a statement released here.

With Windows 7, Lenovo computers and laptops will provide enhanced digital entertainment and personal productivity for consumers, SMB and large enterprise customers.

"Our engineers have been working with Microsoft for three years to jointly create a PC experience that is better, faster, more stable and secure," Lenovo chief operating officer Rory Read said.

Powered by Intel Core2Duo processors, Lenovo PCs and laptops offer a host of applications with 3G connectivity, WiFi (wireless fidelity), Ethernet and Bluetooth access.

"We have increased the resolution of cameras, added a microphone mute button and improved the digital microphone for clearer sounding conversations," Read said.

Global IT research and advisory firm Gartner, however, said Windows 7 launch would have minimal impact on PC shipments growth in the next two quarters as lower spending on technology following global recession would have a cascading effect on its sales.

"Though the PC industry fared marginally better than expected in the third quarter (July-September) of this calendar year (2009) with 81 million units sold worldwide, a 0.5 percent increase year-on-year, inventory adjustments around the Windows 7 launch could artificially affect shipment volumes during the fourth quarter," Gartner principal analyst Mikako Kitagawa said in a statement.

A recent study by the advisory firm has shown that release of operating systems do not drive the PC market.

"Window 7 adoption is not expected to ramp up until late 2010 though there could be a renewed interest in hardware upgrades from consumers and small business during the holiday season," Kitagawa noted.

After three consecutive quarters of year-on-year shipment declines, PC shipments in the U.S. totalled 17.8 million units in third quarter, a 3.9 percent increase from the same quarter of last year.